


Masters of Masks

by alicekittridge



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: A whole lotta feelings, F/F, POV Second Person, Present Tense, Sexual References, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 06:18:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19941592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: You think of Rome and everything that happened and, after all the tension of that day that ended with a bullet, she went back for you.





	Masters of Masks

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason this entire work was inspired by the moment in Rome where V and Eve's hands touched when Eve passed V the bread. Don't ask how my mind came up with this thing; I have no idea. 
> 
> Rated M because of the sexual references; it's a mild M rating. 
> 
> Thank you, as always, for reading xx 
> 
> \--  
> The poem at the beginning is one of my own.

> Pretending is all I seem to know
> 
> How to do anymore—
> 
> I am a master of this mask.
> 
> I put it on every morning.

—“Pretend, Pretend, Pretend”

—

On the nights when sleep evades you—which is more often than you’d like—you find yourself thinking of Villanelle’s hands. Flashing back to the moment in the Italian café when she was Billie with the awful pink hair and you whispered for her to try the bread and passed it over and she ran the inside of her hand over the top of yours. How you pulled swiftly away but let your gaze linger, even when she was retreating with Aaron, because her touch, like everything about her, was electric. Made you feel alive. You are afraid of that touch and you long for it, long for her hands on you, those hands that take life.

The thoughts are relatively innocent. You think of how nicely shaped her hands are. How long and slender her fingers are. How nice they look with her rings adorning them, when she’s not playing a role, and how naked they are without such decorations. But then it turns into the touch again, and while your hand tingles at the memory you imagine what she could do to you.

Not kill you. She wouldn’t. Just touch you until you go mad, until you realize just how starved you are for it.

Tonight, you press your lips to your hand, pretending you’re kissing Villanelle’s, or her mouth. You’re thankful you have the bed, the whole house, to yourself, because you know the moment you look at Niko sleeping soundly beside you you’ll feel a rush of shame. Not for him. But maybe for a life you’re supposed to be living—at least, the one that was supposed to happen when you came home from Rome but never took off.

You’re yourself tonight, but come morning, you put your makeup on in the bathroom after a shower, your work clothes, and stuff your fantasies and feelings deep down and zip them up. There’s the normalcy of work to attend to, and though it hasn’t been as thrilling as of late, it’s something.

Even though it was a month and a half ago, the office still feels empty without Hugo there, making his snide, half-teasing comments with their innuendo. He was a louder presence, but intelligent in his own way. He got you when no one else really did. His empty desk makes you feel something, but you don’t bother to puzzle over it. Instead you stare at the corkboard of kills while munching on a half-stale roll that was left on your desk; it still tastes of butter and cinnamon and would be better warmed up.

Most of the kills on this board are old news, and are Villanelle’s. There’s a mixture of the Ghost’s in there too, to show a disruption in the timeline. It happens relatively in the middle, and then the kills pick back up to Villanelle, only they have a different tone to them. You squint at them, chew a little slower, trying to decipher what you mean by _tone_. They’re still creative, certainly, and brutal, but feel… almost leisurely done. Like she was creative for the sake of it and not for the fun of it.

You begin to wonder why, but the question slips away when Jess waddles in, coffee cup in hand, a Styrofoam box in the other. “Morning,” she greets, sitting slowly at her desk. Inside her box is breakfast: an omelette with a shitton of scrambled eggs. Seeing your gaze, she points at the omelette with her plastic fork and says, “Cravings.”

“You crave eggs?” you ask.

“Better than pickles.”

You shrug. True, it says. You turn back to the board.

“What was it like?” Jess asks around a bite.

“Was what like?”

“Working with Villanelle.”

You laugh a little. There’s a little heat crawling into your cheeks as the memory of the night before the fiasco in the Roman ruins resurfaces. “I got to see how she worked,” you say. “She wouldn’t read anything we gave her. Konstantin and me, I mean. Complained that it was too scripted. But it was amazing, the things she came up with on the spot…”

“A master of improv,” Jess says.

“Yes.” And manipulation. And getting inside my fucking head, you think, sitting at your own desk with a sigh. “God, that whole thing was a trip.”

“I’ll bet. She sounds like a primadonna sometimes.”

“ _Sometimes_ is an understatement,” you say. Her theatrics are many things, but most of all, you think they’re armor, plates of it intersecting to protect something underneath. Something you caught a glimpse of when she confessed to you that she felt things when she was with you, or when you heard her in the middle of orgasm over your earpiece while having sex with Hugo. “You know…” you begin, but trail off. “I want to ask her things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“I don’t know, just… Everything.” You want to say more, but Kenny comes into the room, bearing a file folder.

“It’s the update for the latest kill,” he says. “Phone records, all that.” And then he’s out the door again.

You have lunch by yourself. You’re thankful for the time alone because it allows you to think without someone you know watching you. Jess’s watches are manageable; you can throw walls up and make it convincing enough that soon she’ll be absorbed in her own work again. Carolyn’s are a different story entirely. You feel like you can’t hide anything from that woman. That even if you lie about what sort of state you’re in or how your “domestic life”—her words, not yours—is, she sees right through it, but doesn’t let you know. And when she doesn’t let you know, you wonder how much she knows and whether, one day, she’ll throw it back in your face.

You shake your head, clearing it of thoughts like an Etch-A-Sketch. Focus on your pasta lunch. Wonder, not for the millionth time, where Villanelle is. Beside your plate, your phone lights up with a call. The number is blocked. You don’t have to guess who it is.

The call goes to voicemail.

Then she calls again.

And again.

You pick up on the fourth.

_“Ah, so your grudge isn’t too big after all,”_ Villanelle says. The other thing you register on her end is the chorus of birds chirping in the background.

“You shouldn’t be calling me,” you tell her, and she laughs.

_“It’s encrypted. Nobody will know.”_

You scoff. “So you’re a tech whiz now?”

_“Hardly.”_ A pause. _“Do you still think about Rome?”_ she asks. There’s a quiet playfulness about her tone, something cheery too, but underneath, real curiosity, real longing. A real emotion that tells you she thinks of it often, but about which part, you’ll have to find out for yourself.

“The only thing about Rome I think about is how you shot me and left me at the ruins,” you say.

_“Where do you remember waking up?”_

A hospital. Everyone speaking Italian, a language you knew nothing in except please, thank you, no, and hello and goodbye. Bright lights. Drifting in and out of sleep that, no matter how deep or drug-filled, was always restless, and filled with strange, shining dreams about Villanelle. You say, “A hospital bed.”

_“Hmm,”_ Villanelle says. _“How do you think you got there?”_

Someone could’ve found you and called an ambulance. Or taken you there by car.

Villanelle continues, _“You’re not hard to carry, you know.”_

For long moments, you’re rendered speechless. You imagine the few minutes or so after your world went dark, lying there, bleeding out, and Villanelle in her Billie outfit that made her look like a young, more modern version of Mrs. Claus rushing back to you, scooping you up like she would a bride, and carting you away from the scene. Villanelle laying you down in the backseat of a car she’s just broken into. Villanelle taking you to the hospital, only to leave when she absolutely knew the hands you were in could be trusted.

You ask, “Why would you do that?” Your voice had barely risen above a shocked whisper.

_“You know why,”_ she replies, cryptic as ever. The birds are squawking louder. You think she’s somewhere out of the city, maybe camping in the mountains, making her own Alaska getaway somewhere that isn’t Alaska but close enough to it. Villanelle doesn’t say goodbye, just hangs up.

Her lack of direct answers frustrates you to no end. You set your phone aside, twirl pasta around your fork, but you’re no longer hungry. You don’t know why she’d do such a thing. She’d been so angry at your retreat, at your refusal, your assumption that she didn’t know what love was. (But would she?) So angry, in fact, that she’d shot you. And yet, by the way she carried you away and into the fluorescent safety of the hospital, regretted it.

_Did she shoot me because she loves me?_ you wonder, your spine turning icy. Is that how she views love? Something violent, capable of destroying, with vivid fantasies of solitude where you could share tenderness that came with teeth?

And if so, perhaps your stabbing of her means something different to her entirely.

Your phone lights up with a text just as you’re rising from the table and shrugging on your jacket. Another blocked number, but Villanelle again.

**Call this number next time, 33-2451-6287**

**V xx**

France area code. But she could be anywhere.

That night, you don’t just think of Villanelle’s hands. You think of Rome and everything that happened and, after all the tension of that day that ended with a bullet, she went back for you.

_I feel things when I’m with you._

Honesty. She’d chosen to take off her mask in those moments and to be vulnerable to you. Take her words how you would. The moment they’d left her mouth you knew she wasn’t lying.

—

The next afternoon, you take a longer lunch break. The weather outside is pleasant in its coolness, the sun just the right amount of warm. A perfect English autumn. You sit outside at a restaurant that you and Niko used to frequent, eating curry, the memories of it feeling like nothing now. What hope you had for that life was extinguished the moment you’d returned home from Rome to find his belongings absent and a note stuck to a picture of you both on the kitchen fridge, pinned there by a magnet. It explained that he was leaving. That there was still some choice of whether you wanted one life or the other, but until then, you’d be separated.

You don’t mourn the loss. But the silence in the house is still taking some getting used to.

You dial the number Villanelle gave you, determined to implant new memories into this place.

_“I didn’t think you’d call so soon, Eve,”_ Villanelle says when she picks up. _“Miss me already?”_

“I do think about Rome,” you tell her, speaking around a sudden knot in your throat. “And the days leading up to it. I think about everything.”

You hear Villanelle take a breath. The squawking birds sound further away today. Her silence is long, almost thoughtful. _“Do you want to see me?”_ she finally asks.

Lying won’t be fruitful. “Yes.”

_“Twenty-four hours. The usual place.”_

She means your house.

—

You aren’t expecting Villanelle to be dressed so normally. You’d expected something extravagant and ridiculous, like the mourning dress. Not designer blue jeans, a long-sleeve white T-shirt, Doc Martens, and a leather jacket slung over her shoulder. Out on the curb is a shiny black motorcycle.

“I hope it’s not stolen,” you say, not moving from the doorway just yet.

“I bought it, actually,” says Villanelle.

“Really?” It comes out as a scoff. “When?”

“About an hour before I came here.” She gestures to you with her chin. “Are you going to let me in or be a statue?”

She takes her shoes off in the entryway without question, untying just enough laces for her to slip her socked feet out, putting them straightly against the wall. She follows you into the kitchen, comments, “It smells nice.” She settles easily into one of your chairs, on the surface, relaxed, but you know she has some of her guard up. And you do too, if you’re hesitant to put her at your back. Because the last time you did, she shot you. But there is no gun with her today—at least, not one that you can see. Those sculpted hands are empty.

“It’s shepherd’s pie,” you say. “And… pasta.”

“Did you remember the Worcestershire sauce?”

A last conversation with Niko comes flying back.

_“She… asked me for the recipe for shepherd’s pie. Seemed really pleased over the mention of Worcestershire sauce.”_

_“And then she killed Gemma.”_

_Niko swallowed. “Yes.”_

“I did,” you tell her, turning the oven off when the timer beeps, fetching a pot holder from the drawer next to it. “And don’t bother asking if you can set the table.”

“I wasn’t going to bother.” You hear her shift on her chair. “You don’t let me do anything.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You turn the stove off, strain the pasta, add a little extra garlic to the marinara sauce. This streak of sudden perfectionism surprises you. You want to please her, keep her satisfied, purring. Maybe it’ll keep her from doing something rash.

“You’re so determined to do things by the book,” Villanelle says. “Never eager to throw it out.”

You finally turn to face her, potholder in hand. Her eyes flit briefly to it, calculating in case you throw it at her. “What would you call this?”

At that, she smiles, and you detect no falseness in it. “A good start.”

Dinner is weighty. It seems like everything between you is weighty now, with a side of ice walls thrown up. A side effect of Villanelle’s shooting of you, you know, and on her side, the fact that you were backing away, denying everything she threw at you. You steal glances at her and she seems just as inaccessible as she was the first time she’d broken into your house. You wonder, underneath her calm exterior, if she’s still heartbroken. For that was the emotion you’d seen on her face in the ruins—pure, utter heartbreak.

At last you say, “I thought you were by the book.”

She swallows a bite of pasta. “Are we being honest with each other now, Eve?”

You nod, and something flashes across her face. Relief?

You plod forward. “There’s categories for people like you. Boxes people try to fit you in, and they give presentations at work about it and are certain that those categories are what those people are.”

Villanelle sighs. “What are you saying?”

“That you’re not a textbook.” You grip your fork tighter, aware that your hands have started to shake, and that you’ve forgotten the wine. “That I… made a mistake in thinking you were.” Words are pouring out now; you don’t know if you can stop them. “I think about London and Rome because you threw what I knew out the window and redefined it, and I…” Well, now they’ve stopped.

“What?” Villanelle asks quietly. “You’re scared?”

You give a barely detectible nod. But scared of what, you’re not really sure. Her confessions. Her actions. Her _feelings_ for you. Only you. _I feel things when I’m with you._

“Thank you,” Villanelle says after a long silence.

“For what?” you say.

“Taking off the mask.”

You use the lull to get down a bottle of red wine. You pour each of you half a glass. She thanks you again when you set it in front of her. Her politeness amuses you. You find it ironic that someone who kills people has such good manners.

Villanelle twirls the wineglass in her fingers, holding it by the stem. Then she takes a sip of the wine, holds it in her mouth for a second, and swallows. There’s a small hum that tells you she likes it.

At last, when you’ve scraped your plates clean, you ask her, “Why did you do it?” You know she knows what you mean.

“Still haven’t riddled it out?” she says.

“I gave you answers,” you say.

Villanelle sits in silence for such a long time that you’re certain she isn’t going to answer. Then, softly, “Because I meant what I told you.”

_I love you._

Her wineglass is still. But her fingers stroke the stem.

“Give me that,” you say. She hands the glass over. You take it from her, set it aside, and grasp her hand. You hold the thing you’ve thought of most, and then, suddenly, you’re leaning into her space and pressing your lips to hers. 


End file.
